UW, Media, and Quote

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Just over a year has passed since the UW announced a search for someone to replace Richard McCormick, who bailed on his $275,000 a year job as president in 2002 to take the same post at Rutgers University. Since then, little has emerged about a possible successor. Rumor has it that the job was offered to former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, who turned it down. Mary Sue Coleman of the University of Iowa also reportedly passed, in favor of the top job at the University of Michigan. Continuing silence by the UW regents and the search committee has faculty members edgy. Nobody objected when the vice-president for academic affairs, Lee Huntsman, was made interim president, but the regents appointed Huntsman to serve through 2004, leading to fears that they might settle for an in-house academic bureaucrat. In January, the UW chapter of the American Association of University Professors appealed to the regents to keep profs and students in the loop. They got no response, and shortly thereafter another rumor swept the campus: The headhunters were considering the dean of the UW Medical School, Paul Ramsey. Ramsey is the head headhunter, chairing the Search Advisory Committee, so fear of an insider fix has run rampant. The last straw for some faculty was talk that lame-duck Gov. Gary Locke's sudden, zealous commitment to higher ed in his latest budget was a way of positioning himself for the job. Why not? Dan Evans went from being governor to president of the state college he helped create, Evergreen. Says one faculty member keeping watch: "An Olympia connection matters less these days, because the administration is basically giving up on the Legislature as a source of significant funding." The regents need someone with a record of raising money from government and private donors?money that comes overwhelmingly from tech and bio-sci sources these days. That's why the med school dean makes sense

and why the undergrad and liberal arts schools are likely to be further starved, whoever gets the job. ROGER DOWNEY

MEDIA

Will Portland, Maine, figure in negotiations over the joint operating agreement (JOA) between The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer? Hearst-Argyle Television, controlled by Hearst Corp., which owns the P-I, has bought WMTW-TV, the ABC affiliate in Portland, for $37.5 million. The Seattle Times Co. owns the daily newspaper in Portland, the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram, and WMTW already works closely with the paper. Hearst supports loosening regulations prohibiting companies from owning a TV station and newspaper in the same market. Could it be acquiring this asset as some kind of bargaining chip in acrimonious negotiations over Seattle's JOA? "It's an interesting question," says Tom Campo, Hearst-Argyle's director of investor relations, chuckling, "but it has absolutely no relationship to the JOA situation." Times spokesperson Kerry Coughlin agrees. GEORGE HOWLAND JR.

'QUOTE'

"I'd like to see a compassionate, conscientious cop in the United States Congress looking after his district and staring down Al Qaeda."?KVI-AM host John Carlson, referring to King County Sheriff Dave Reichert's decision to run for 8th District U.S. representative (Seattle Times, Feb. 5)